Meet the committee members: Thomas Starr

For the past five years, committee members have worked tirelessly to make the USO Riverfest Gala a success. Each member has a unique path that led them to become involved in the event. Below is Thomas Starr’s story about why he keeps coming back.

“My commitment to helping with USO Riverfest Gala completes a circle then began when I was a very young boy.

My brother and I spent several formative years at Ft. Campbell, KY with our paternal father Tom Evans, a career soldier with the Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne and veteran of the European theater. Our adopted father, Roy Starr, enlisted in the U.S. Navy at the age of 17 before finishing high school and was in Honolulu when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

So it seemed natural for me to join the U.S. Army when I graduated from high school. The career I had imagined was cut short, however, after a series of circumstances forced me to spend six months at the Walter Reed U.S. Army Medical Center.

Serving Montgomery Inn ribs and UDF ice cream to the troops closed the circle that began more than forty years earlier when I begrudging left my comrades in arms to return to civilian life. The USO Riverfest Gala and the trips to Walter Reed have given me a chance to shake the hands of those troops whose courage and dedication to country I have admired for so long.

I am so proud of Cincinnati for helping us sell out the USO Riverfest Gala at the Montgomery Inn Boathouse every year. Buy your tickets today; we sell out every year!

Join me in meeting and thanking those who “stand on the wall” defending our freedoms and our way of life. May God bless you and America!”

Thomas J. Starr
Founder & Chairman
Miracles for Life

Photo: Thomas Starr and Sergeant Major Kenneth O. Preston, U.S. Army, at the Montgomery Inn BBQ at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 2008.

Check out Sergeant Major Kenneth O. Preston’s video blog: http://www.army.mil/leaders/sma/